NoirNovels.com - Noir novels, books and literature

Noir News

Screwball

7 Sep 03
Reviewed By Steve Nester

David Ferrell?s Screwball takes America?s favorite pastime?baseball?and baseball?s most cursed team, the Boston Red Sox, and gives them the opportunity to make a deal with the devil. Into the heartbreak that has been the Sox?s lot since they traded Babe Ruth directly after winning the 1928 World Series, fate has dropped Ron Kane, who has the potential to be the greatest pitcher who ever played the game.

After carefully preparing Kane in the minors, the front office brings him to Boston. The phenom?s pitching is nothing short of miraculous. Talk of a World Series berth is underway just as the bodies begin to appear. Boston, Texas, Chicago? a decapitated corpse is found wherever the Bosox travel. When the heads are recovered, all the victims are found to be bald men. They all have two vertical lines carved into them. Ron Kane?s number is 11. When a hotel security tape shows Kane stuffing a headless corpse into a garbage bag, the front office decides to make the deal with the devil.

Who is the devil? The front office has seen the devil and the devil is them. With the World Series at stake, along with millions of dollars in revenues, an incalculable amount of prestige, and almost a century of disappointed fans, not to mention embarrassment and possible jail time, these are the times that try men?s souls. When this type of opportunity appears it is also the time men will sell their souls to fulfill their dreams. Here is where the satire begins.

What General Manager Neville Wulfmeyer and the front office needs is a fall guy. He realizes that sooner or later his team will come under suspicion. It just so happens that a plain talking Boston detective is already nosing around. Ron Kane must be spared and the series must be won, so who can be offered as a likely murderer? Everyone has their own favorite, which translates into who is the most expendable player in terms of playing ability, likeability, and amount of salary being paid. Who does the front office really hate? Benito Castillo is a front-runner. Arrogant, over-paid, rude and in a slump, Castillo is AWOL from the dugout but could be presented as a viable suspect. Ex-Bosox Kenton Randall ?The Raven? Ravinowitch, the odd, disgruntled, surgically disfigured cancer survivor who bears a grudge against Manager Augie Sharkey for not playing him his last year in the majors, is also a handy culprit. Warming the bench kept his playing statistics too low for him to be considered as a candidate for the Hall of Fame. The moral juggling act of Wulfmeyer is something to behold as he attempts to justify the lives of innocent victims with Boston winning a World Series. The Panama Canal, he reasons, was certainly worth the 10,000 or so lives that were lost in its construction. Wouldn?t a World Series win for Boston, the first in almost one hundred years, be worth the lives of a handful of old men? Who would miss them? Eventually Kane will get caught. By that time, he?ll have been traded to another team. Kane?s off the field behavior is so horrific it calls attention to the off the field behavior of all professional baseball players, and is exaggeration almost to the breaking point.

This is what makes for good satire. Jonathan Swift would be proud. Some players gamble, some chase skirts, others drink too much or get into socially unacceptable contretemps, like harassing nuns or driving automobiles into hotel fountains. The front office must deal with all these player problems and to an extent are accepted as being part of the game when dealing with high-strung athletes. But serial murder is as anti-social and as idiosyncratic as one can get. But, as Wulfmeyer?s behavior indicates, sometimes any type of behavior will be tolerated as long as the player is performing. David Ferrell?s writing is full of wry observations of human nature and baseball, and there are nothing strained in this narrative. Screwball gives the reader a good look at baseball and its inner workings. And as America?s game, perhaps a good hard look at the moral climate as well.

Add a review